The positive impact of celebrities choosing donor conception

You might have seen in The Times on Saturday an article revealing that Cheryl is looking to use donor sperm to extend her family. This is because she is currently single and wants to have more children.

Recently, Natalie Imbruglia has also shared that this is the path that she has chosen to go down. She has just had a son Max using IVF with donor sperm. They are in the company of Monika Cruz, who now has a 6 year old daughter with an anonymous donor.

Why is this significant?

I carried out a poll on The Stork and I Instagram to gauge how people felt about Cheryl sharing this news. 90% of the people who answered said they thought it was positive, with 10% stating that they couldn’t care less! For some people, I totally understand that this information feels totally irrelevant. However, I think that in general it is having a positive impact for 3 key reasons:

Highlighting the options

There are many women in their 30s and 40s who are single and are anxious about missing out on motherhood. These women may not have even considered that using donor sperm is an option for them. By having celebrities in the public eye who have a big audience discuss the topic, it allows people to discover that it might be an option for them.

Normalising the decision

I coach many women on the topic of using donor sperm to have a baby solo. It is extremely common for these women to be working through feelings of shame.

Of course this is not how everyone feels, many are extremely proud of their decision from the beginning. A large amount of women though need to work through some feelings of failure of not being able to start a family in a more ‘traditional’ method.

Some women are anxious about what others will think of them. Whether they have somehow failed, and that they are having to go down this route that others may possibly judge them for.

If you have the likes of Cheryl, Natalie Imbruglia and Monika Cruz that are leading the way on this route to parenthood, it begins to become more normalised. It helps to change the life scripts we’ve grown up with that to be successful we must meet a partner, get married and then have a baby.

Positive press

The more positive articles are written about donor conception the easier it will be for those impacted by it. Whether it’s the donors themselves, the donor conceived children or the recipient of the donor sperm, all can potentially benefit when donor conception is written about positively in the media.